ASSIGNMENT

TALENT MANAGEMENT
1) Explain the need for talent management. What are
consequences of failure in managing talent?
 Need for talent management.
In recent times, talent management has acquired the top slot in the list of priorities
for organization. Organisations require talented people and also a proper process to
manage them for various reasons. They include:
a. The War for Talent:
"Forty percent of corporate officers said company growth was limited because they
don’t have the right talent." 1
1 Harvard Business Schoo
Competition is keen for skilled employees at all levels; seeking hiring for fit.
Employers need people who can contribute immediately and add value today and
who are flexible to continue to add value in the future.
b. Demographics:
It relates to a particular population or a group within it. Demographics are driving the
competition for talent management and will have greater impact in the near future. In
the next ten years, the Employment Policy Foundation, USA reports:
 23 million net new jobs will be created
 The supply of employees will be increasingly outstripped by the demand
c. Cost of turnover:
It is extremely expensive to replace valued talent. According to research reports, estimates of
turnover costs range from .75 % to 1.5 % of an employee's annual salary and benefits. If a
company loses 100 people it wanted to retain, who make an average of INR 50,000 each,
replacement could cost INR 5 million or more. This perspective makes a good business case for
managing talented employees instead of replacing them.
d. Changing expectations of employees:
Unlike the past generation of employees, today’s employees have a different set of expectation
from their employers. Generations X and Y" (those under 35 years) and many baby boomers
are often driven by a set of work values such as job enrichment, continuous learning and
development, challenge, autonomy, work-life balance, and meaningful work that add value to
their career. They are likely to leave their employer if these conditions are not met.
e. Push for Productivity:
There is a considerable push for productivity and performance improvement in most
organizations today. As a result of downsizing, reduced budgets, and technology,
organizations have higher expectations for individual and team performance which is
possible only through strategic talent management.

 Consequences of talent management.

Organisations have to face the following problems, if they fail to manage talent.
 Loss of key leaders: The result of failure in managing talent can lead to loss of key
employees and sometimes not finding even an approximate replacement.
  The repeated turnover of key employees from an organisation will affect the very
work culture within the organisation.
 Poor performance of employees can affect the targets and productivity of an
organisation.
 Financial crisis due loss in productivity
 High turnover cost or replacement cost

2) What are the building blocks of effective talent management

system. Explain any one.
 Listing the building blocks of talent management.
Successful companies seek to determine the actual or potentials of each employee’s
capability for adding value to the organisation. This allows them to maximise their
contribution through appropriate investment in training and development. Improper
allocation of compensation and training resources can result in unwanted turnover,
morale, and performance related issues.
The building blocks of talent management enable the organisations to efficiently
manage recruitment and retention process.
Following are the building blocks of talent management which we are going to
discuss:
 Competencies that get result
 Performance Management.
 Evaluating Employee Potential.
 Recruiting Super keepers
‘Super keepers’ are the employees whose competency levels and performance
greatly exceed expectations.
The key to accurate capability measurement and therefore, appropriate investment
allocation lies in the determination and assessment of identified competencies. Every
organisation has its unique set of competencies which are the behaviours or skill
expectations that are important to the success of each employee and to the success
of the entire organisation.

 Explain any one of the building blocks.

Planning: In an effective organization, work is planned out in advance. Planning
refers to setting performance expectations and goals for groups and individuals to
channel their efforts towards achieving organizational objectives. Getting employees
involved in the planning process will help them understand the goals of the
organization, what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and how well it should
be done.
The regulatory requirements for planning employees' performance include
establishing the elements and standards of their performance appraisal plans.
Performance appraisal is used to measure the relative value of an employee through
the process of obtaining, evaluating and recording information about that employee.
The main objective of the performance appraisal process is to measure and enhance
the actual performance thereby augmenting the future prospective of an employee.
 According to Flippo, a prominent personality in the field of Human resources,
"performance appraisal is the systematic, periodic and an impartial rating of an
employee’s excellence in the matters pertaining to his present job and his potential
for a better job."

3) Define talent planning. What are the objectives and steps of

talent planning?
 Definition of talent planning.
Talent Planning
Organisations are finding it difficult to get, expand, and maintain skilled employees
because of increasing need for talent, aging labour force, and various globalisation
challenges. In this situation, talent planning1 plays a very important role. It helps us to
add real-time, enterprise-wide clarity to examine the workforce and then place talent
where the impact is more visible and effective.
Target planning helps an organisation to predict its upcoming workforce demand and
then estimate the numbers, nature, and sources of potential employees. Talent
planning also helps an organisation to decide if it has the ability to meet the business
goals, and facilitates it to capitalise on return on talent investments. Organisations
get new thoughts and metrics regarding present and future workforce gaps with the
help of a structured workforce planning process.

 Objectives of talent planning.

The main purpose of talent planning is to establish defined competencies and sets
criteria to measure its talent & skills. Other objectives include attracting and
recognising key people, providing the resourceful employees as per the requirement
and developing of best practices in recruiting and resourcing.
It is evident by recent investigations that world’s top class organisations adopt long-
term strategic talent planning to capitalise on their recruitment and retention approaches.

The major objectives of strategic talent planning include:

 determining workforce gaps in order to meet business requirements
 recognising successful performers
 identifying new and emerging job roles
 planning alternative workforce tactics
 creating procedures for knowledge transfer
 developing faster career paths for very high potentials
 creating capacity to implement strategies
 knowing the needs of the organisation
 accomplishing organisation excellence
 developing keepers, super-keepers, and solid citizens
 distributing training and development resources
 optimising investment in employees
 ensuring leadership.

 Steps of talent planning.

The five key steps in strategic talent planning2 include:
1. Planning workforce
2. Imaging and branding
3. Sourcing methods
4. Screening and assessing candidates
5. Marketing and communicating

1. Planning workforce is the first step in strategic talent planning. It involves clear
understanding of the organisation’s business objectives and the competitive environment that
particular organisation works in. This process is a mixture of understanding and predicating
demand, being knowledgeable and conscious about the talent supply situation from the existing
sources. This step also involves listing the jobs expected in the annual budgeting process and
factoring in revenue.
2. Image and brand: It is a very difficult task to make people aware of the organisational image
and brand. It involves constant interaction and also a plan to create general awareness via
advertisements to let people know that it is a best place to work. The organisations must be able
to answer questions like, “What makes it different or unique?” or “Why would people like to
come and work for them?” It is also necessary for the organisations to ensure their
advertisements, web presence, and overall corporate promotions are supporting this image.

3. Sourcing methods: This includes developing a versatile sourcing tactics. It is essential to

think about the candidates who are very active and responsive to the organisation’s brand and
image-building messages. At the same time, it is also necessary to improve the skills to tap
inactive candidates. Decisions are made based on past experience of the candidates in order to
locate the candidates and choose the best among them. Referrals from current staff, network of
professionals, web-based search, own web site also help in detecting suitable candidates.
Organisations can also decide based on past experience what works best for them in building
those sourcing channels to the maximum.
4. Screening and assessing candidates: This step talks about the heavy investment on
educating managers in behavioural interviews and the recruiters who are considered to be the
main screeners. It also describes the role of internet and web-based tests in recruitment. It also
tells about the role of recruiters in screening and assessing the candidates. Automate screening
lessens the volume of candidates and really increases candidate satisfaction.
5. Market and communication: Organisation’s website acts as a precious tool in helping
candidates to know about their status and also to get feedback and information. It is important to
create systems to constantly interact with candidates personally and also send newsletters and
e-mails. Candidate relationship management systems provide information to candidates about
the existing openings and also let them know about their status. It is necessary to ensure the
systems selected fit the strategy and make economic sense.
 4) What is meant by talent acquisition? Explain some of the talent
acquistition strategies.
 Meaning of talent acquisition.
Talent acquisition1 is an influential process that comprises of all the sub-processes
involved in recognising, attracting, and finally employing highly-talented and skilled
people who are more productive for the company. When used in the context of the
recruiting and HR profession, talent acquisition usually refers to the talent acquisition
department or team within the Human Resources department. The talent acquisition
team within a company is responsible for finding, acquiring, assessing, and hiring
candidates to fill roles that are required to meet company goals and fill project
requirements.
Talent acquisition as a unique function and department is a relatively new
development. In many companies, recruiting itself is still an indistinct function of an
HR generalist. Within many corporations, however, recruiting as a designation did
not encompass enough of the duties that fell to the corporate recruiter. A separate
designation of talent acquisition was required to meet the advanced and unique
functions. Modern talent acquisition is a strategic function of an organization, not only
encompassing talent procurement, but also workforce planning functions such as
organizational talent forecasting, talent pipelining, and strategic talent assessment
and development.
 Explain of talent acquisition.
Talent acquisition1 is an influential process that comprises of all the sub-processes
involved in recognising, attracting, and finally employing highly-talented and skilled
people who are more productive for the company. When used in the context of the
recruiting and HR profession, talent acquisition usually refers to the talent acquisition
department or team within the Human Resources department. The talent acquisition
team within a company is responsible for finding, acquiring, assessing, and hiring
candidates to fill roles that are required to meet company goals and fill project
requirements.
Talent acquisition as a unique function and department is a relatively new
development. In many companies, recruiting itself is still an indistinct function of an
HR generalist. Within many corporations, however, recruiting as a designation did
not encompass enough of the duties that fell to the corporate recruiter. A separate
designation of talent acquisition was required to meet the advanced and unique
functions. Modern talent acquisition is a strategic function of an organization, not only
encompassing talent procurement, but also workforce planning functions such as
organizational talent forecasting, talent pipelining, and strategic talent assessment
and development.
Talent acquisition is quickly becoming a unique profession, perhaps even distinct from the
practice of general recruitment. Talent acquisition professionals are usually skilled not only in
sourcing tactics, candidateassessment, and compliance and hiring standards, but also in
employment branding practices and corporate hiring initiatives.
Nowadays, many organizations take the help of talent acquisition software to ease the process
of talent acquisition. The main advantage of the talent acquisition software is that it reorganises
the complete hiring process and significantly decreases the overall recruitment expenses. It also
facilitates the managers and recruiters in a single online setting to create and post applications,
look for the talent acquisition pool, screen candidates, carry out background checks, and
choose the best candidates for the job position.
The talent acquisition software provides many options to the recruiting team which include:
 Creating and revising online job applications
 Planning for interviews and entering online interview results
 Combining billing and tracking recruitment expenses
 Examining all references related to a given candidate

5) Why employee engagement is important? What are the factors

of engagement? Describe some of the best practices in talent
management?
 Importance of employee engagement.
As illustrated by Ulrich (1997), in his seminal book Human Resources Champions,
‘‘Employee contribution becomes a critical business issue because in trying to
produce more output with less employee input, companies have no choice but to try
to engage not only the body but the mind and soul of every employee’’ (p. 125).
The most important behaviours of engaged employees include:
 Talking about some good things and being positive about the organisation to
colleagues, potential employees, and customers.
 Developing a strong wish to be a member of the organisation.
 Putting in extra effort to contribute to the organisation's development
An organisation’s ability to achieve increased productivity and advanced business results is
strongly associated with its skill to handle employee engagement.
The performance of engaged employees is usually better and are hence more
encouraged. There is a major connection between employee engagement and
productivity. Engaged employees are more productive, comfortable and most
importantly reliable to an organisation. Employee engagement plays a crucial role in
any organisation because it not only helps in retaining skilled employees, but also in
increasing the level of performance.

 Factors of employee engagement.

Factors of engagement
The employee engagement and retention is influenced by many organisational
factors which include:
 A culture of respect where excellent work is appreciated.
 Accessibility of positive feedback and mentoring.
 Opportunity for improvement and professional development.
 Fair and proper reward, appreciation, and incentive systems.
 Availability of efficient leadership.
 Clear job expectations.
 Adequate tools to achieve work responsibilities.
 High levels of motivation

 Best practices in talent engagement.

New research underscores the importance of "engaging employees" in their jobs and
companies as a way to foster high productivity, high morale and excellent customer service.
Increasingly, companies are innovating on the traditional employee opinion survey and moving
beyond simple measurement of employee satisfaction. More than ever, companies are
measuring the extent to which employees are "engaged" as the best indicator of employee
health. Employee survey has become part of organization’s continuous improvement culture.
The workplace and employment practices lead to important business outcomes such as
attraction, retention and engagement (enthusiasm, commitment, passion, effort). The employee
survey is the measurement instrument that identifies gaps in the workplace for improvement.
“You can’t improve what you don’t measure”. Including employees in the survey design, making
them to take the ownership of this and maintaining transparency in communication goes a long
way in boosting employee engagement in organizations.
One of the report by Best Practices, LLC which originated from survey results and speaker
presentations introduced at the Global Benchmarking Council's meeting on Employee
Engagement; uncovers best practices in identifying and improving drivers that are proving most
effective in engaging employees in their jobs, their companies and their work groups. Some
ofthe best practices adopted by organizations across the world have been outlined by the
research report. They are:
1. An effective performance management system is the cornerstone of engagement – from
goal-setting to reward, recognition and incentive programs.
2. 75% of high performing companies hold managers accountable for engaging their
employees. This is in comparison to 35% across the entire study group that holds managers
accountable.
3. High performing companies engage employees by cutting across functional silos to create a
sense of connectedness through communities of practice, cross-functional teams, and by
creating common work areas.
4. High performing companies recognize employees for their suggestions, and employ group
brainstorming to enhance the feeling of connectedness.
5. Employee and customer loyalty attributes reflect each other, supporting the premise behind
the importance of engagement which is based on a correlation between customer satisfaction
and engagement.
6. Key factors in engagement are alignment of employees toward strategy, enabling employees
to have the capability to engage themselves, and creating the sense of engagement – creating
the sense that individuals are a part of a greater entity.
7. Top performing companies rank cross-functional teams and councils as the most
effective vehicle to help employees understand how their – as well as team and/or
business unit – efforts contribute to corporate performance.

6) Describe some of the major challenges in talent management.

 Major challenges in talent management.
The top talent management challenges are:
 Develop a value proposition that appeals to all the generations of
employees: Organisations are struggling to create a positive employee experience
that is valued by all employees because of the presence of different generations
within today’s workplace. A young employee of age 22 may have a colleague of age
55. Companies need to create an employee experience that appeals to individuals
with varied needs and preferences. For example consider a company that consists of
a number of retail store, having a workforce of about 1,50,000. The store has a high
percentage of young employees but the corporate and leadership roles are handled
by older and experienced people. It is the responsibility of the organisation to create
a compelling employee value proposition catering to the need of all generation of
employees.
 Developing a robust leadership pipeline: Corporations in general face the
potential threat of not possessing a robust talent pool from which future leaders can
be selected. This problem arises due to the fact that the number of people with such
talent is less. An interesting issue is that though there are few talented people, they
are not interested to take up these senior leadership roles.
 Developing the abilities of employees to take up global leadership positions:
Assessing expertise in specific functional or technical arenas is relatively
straightforward. Determining if individuals have people skills, leadership abilities and
global diversity sensibilities is difficult. It is the responsibility of the organisation to
develop such skills in employees through introducing appropriate interventions. For
example corporations can set up their own academy to develop and groom its
employees.
 Key knowledge and relationships transfer: The retirement of a significant
portion of the workforce challenges all companies. Organisations that depend on
inferred knowledge like those in customer relationships need to have effective
transfer of knowledge and relationships among employees.

Exodus of talent: One of the greatest threats faced by organisations is the exodus
of mid-career talent. These are the people on whom the company has pinned hope
for future leadership and invested heavily in. Therefore it is necessary for
organisations to develop talent management practices that help in retaining such
talented people.
 Attract young and old: The talent management practices should be such that it
attracts both young and old talent.
 Strategy and talent pipelines being out of sync: When the organization
strategy and the talent pipelines are out of sync, the organizations end up grooming
lots of superbly qualified candidates for leadership in dead-end specialities. So,
aligning talent assessment systems closely to organizational strategic priorities is a
major challenge.
 Talent management being a way of life than a slogan: In many of the
companies the finest assessment and mentoring tools are not being used for
succession planning. Senior management think that coaching or identifying high
potential employees are not their business but somebody else’s. This creates a
corrosive culture of “talent importers” i.e. hiring talent from outside. The antidote for
this is rewarding the top executives for undertaking these self less but essential
tasks.
 Payoff from talent development effort hard to measure: Traditionally, the
payoff from talent development efforts is hard to measure and it takes years to play
out. As a result, there have not been many systematic efforts to keep track of what
assessment techniques are most valuable within a company, which bosses have the
best eye for talent or what recurring mistakes ought to be fixed. A robust tracking
system needs to be developed and implemented that not only will keep track of just
executives’ career paths but also of their assessment and training along the way